Tales from the Gael

Amazing what we find when we go through the files on our computers. I found this, and decided to add it to the Kiev file, but thought I would share first. Might make you want to dip back and have another look at another time!

Otherwise this week we have been buying up furniture for our new house. Our days in Edinburgh are numbered now, and we shall be on to pastures new. Now read on!

Kiev – 25 March, 2007

The sun is pouring in and Beethoven is playing and I feel very virtuous sitting here in my make-up and not much else. Just tried on 2 body warmers…wondering if it’s the day to cast off the winter coat.

The ethnic goat skin extravaganza that I bought with such enthusiasm last year seems hard and scratchy, and just walking from the bedroom to the sitting room has left a raw patch on my neck where the skin has been glued on to the woolly bit. Might have to try slicing it off with the fruit knife. (the collar bit). So a project for the morning I feel. (Just done it….and it’s a bit better)  Incidentally my embroidery is coming on in leaps and bounds…looking pretty damn good if I say so myself! So many cakes and cups of tea have been threaded in along with all the reveries that have made up my life over the last few months.

John and I had a social day yesterday…we met Stan and Judy in Podil for lunch. We were alarmed that we weren’t going to eat till 4pm, (brunch? Help!) So we had to have a fried egg sandwich first then off we went down Andreivsky. We met and spent the afternoon visiting various art galleries and churches, that without local knowledge we would never have seen.

Podil looks to me like something out of the Wild West…low buildings and wide streets. Apparently it means the hem. It’s the hem, or the bottom of the city, where all the workers would have lived, close to the river.  Now its trendy and bohemian. ( I should have worn my goats skin waist coat and looked like a proper hippy)

We don’t know this couple. Judy does supply teaching at school and she suggested we meet up, so it was an interesting afternoon. Judy is 55 from New York and is married to Stan who is Russian and they have been in Kiev and Russia for the past 15 years. He has had many careers, but at present he is director of a big charity project for the jews, (or something).

So as virtual strangers we went into the gallery of modern art, and were confronted with penises galore. I felt as though I was seeing an adolescent boy’s jotter…so many ‘naughty’ images that usually dominate when testosterone is rampant. So Stan explained all this pornographic ‘art’ and the feelings of freedom and being actually ‘allowed’ to express nudity, religion and politics with such graphic accuracy. We stood bemused looking at 3 ‘bondage’ studies, where the very lithe and beautiful blonde was trussed and tied naked to the branches of a tree. It was obviously painful as one picture showed all the wealds that had occurred from the ropes cutting into her wrists.  I could just imagine a nice couple walking their dog through the woods and coming across the model and photographer in action! The mind boggles!

There were other strange images of dental x rays and the usual bizarre turns of imagination.

Some of the galleries were down funny alley ways, and so much of the art looked like childish doodles…and I felt quite a fraud keeping a straight face and trying to look interested.

The contrast was incredible when we visited the churches. The iconic art and murals of eight or nine centuries was unbelievable.

We visited one church or monastery that is a pilgrimage sight for many from all over Europe. There was a coach load from Belarus when we went in. One of the features is a natural spring of ‘holy water’ in the court yard. We dutifully lined up and cupped our hands and had a small drink and a prayer, and then Stan read the sign on the wall. I imagined it said, ‘drink here and you will thirst again, but drink from the spirit and you will have life everlasting’ or whatever…memories of the Jesus Well in Crieff, when I was at school. But no…it just said, ‘Don’t wash your feet or your clothes here’.

We called into an apothecary museum which is also a working pharmacy, and I bought some soap made to an 825 year old recipe. It is reputed to give you soft skin…so I had a go last night and they DO NOT LIE! I shall go back and get a truck load, if I can ever find my way back through the tangle of streets!

We had lunch in a Georgian restaurant, thank the lord again for Stan, who just ordered up for us. It was different and delicious, but the main high light was Stan himself. His stories were magical, and he gave us lots of pointers. The reason Ukranians don’t smile outside, is that they see no need to smile without a reason; it’s a sign of idiocy or perhaps prostitution. So there we are…we have been critical of all these gorgeous girls strutting about like androids, when really it is we foreigners that have the problem, flashing our dental work to all and sundry.

He and Judy lived in Moscow and another town somewhere beginning with S and he was the director of 4 Coca Cola factories. We asked about mafia and he said he had to pay $4 million for protection, and one day he came out of the office and the mafia were on one side and the KGB on the other. Judy had rung him and asked when he was getting home, he replied, its not when…but if!

Judy, not to be out done told of the time when she was walking past a building innocently, when suddenly a big cavalcade stopped and the VIP got out and then all his gun men and security guys made a circle round him their heads whipping about for pot shooters…until the guy got in the door. Judy meantime, felt very exposed as she wondered if maybe the possible assassin might just settle for her!

These were the days when people would drive around all day searching for a packet of Marlboros (as if anyone would??? but I am not a smoker) and there was bread queues etc. Stan was there on his own at the time, and he was with a Swiss colleague (in his 40’s), who was very interested in this young 17 year old. Stan was so embarrassed as he felt like a pimp at the disco with the pair of them. He sat between them, as Swiss guy says, ‘Tell her I want to f…her) Stan says, ‘No, you can’t say that…say  you love her’ Swiss guy says, ‘ How can I say that; I have a wife and 3 daughters, just say I want to f…her and would $10 be alright?’ So Stan relays the message. The girl was very excited and asks Stan if this is a good price!!!

So we talked about the government, Yushenko, Timoshenko and the corruption and the traffic police. It was interesting … and then we waddled home … totally full of Georgian soups, and meat and hot spinach. Got home and collapsed and returned to our staid world of the brown chairs and lurid carpet.

Today is market and food buying day…and then another week of school. Time is flying!

3^rd April. 2007

Since the rally at the weekend things have escalated, and Yushenko dissolved parliament yesterday, and the crowds are gathering in Independence square, and masses are arriving from Russia to support Yanukovich, so its looking a bit scary. We are all on alert at school and everyone has been told school may be cancelled tomorrow. The traffic and congestion is terrible with such crowds. Who knows what will happen. As we live very close to the parliament we see all the tents where people are settled for the duration, in the Marynski park. Apparently the police back Yanukovich (the PM) and the army back Yushenko (president) There may be clashes.

Natasha arrived for a week, and the sun shone and we whisked her around the monuments and churches,

ate pancakes with red caviar and then she and I took the night train to Lviv, a small city bordering Poland.

The big sleeper had seen much history by the looks of things, and it was all so strange as we were bundled on to our bunks and awaited to see who our berth companions might be. It turned out we only had one man sharing with us. He was a customs and excise inspector, on his way to Lviv on business. He had no English, we had no Russian (apart from hello and how much) but it turned out that he and Natasha had done standard grade German at school. Long ago I was testing her on her vocabulary and one of the sentences was, ‘I have a guinea pig and two cats’. I remember saying at the time, ‘well that doesn’t sound very useful.’ Little did we know that the Customs and Excise man would ask Tasha if she had any pets!!! She dutifully trotted out her sentence and he was most interested!

Lviv was delightful and charming. We wandered around looking at statues, buying necklaces and eating fondue and drinking a bottle of wine. We were so overcome with sleep we went to the cemetery and lay down by a grave and slept for an hour.

I chose a young eighteen year old to rest beside; he had a nice face on his tomb stone. The return journey was less interesting, and we just spread out our purchases and wanted to wear everything at once!

I have lost some of the early diary accounts for Jan-June of 2007, but here are some pictures of Christmas and the frozen days of January and February. Please note the nude bathers…apparently the thing to do, for long life and beauty treatments!!!

It’s been ten days of witnessing heroic stoicism in my fellow humans. It all started with the Edinburgh Tattoo. It was supposed to be a treat for John’s birthday and we had seen a show, ate fish and chips on the pavement amongst the throngs, drank beer in a pub and then … the heavens opened BIG TIME.

We were herded like cattle in a queue that went on for a mile, and not allowed to put our umbrellas up until the brigadier said so.

Then we eventually sat up in the gods and the show began. Horizontal rain lashed the pipers, the tubas, the Bollywood dancers in their pretty saris and the Swiss drummers. Uniforms were drenched, the Highland dancers splashed in puddles, but so gracefully. We got home soaked to the skin at 1 in the morning. I have never been so pleased to see a hot bath in my life.

Then on to Munich, where the sun shone, and we wandered through a fairy tale city of geraniums and colour and happy people.

We watched the famous glockenspiel (a memento of the plague that kept everyone drinking indoors for fear of passing on the disease), and then ate in the beer gardens and swigged a large glass or two. We even did some shopping. John was intrigued at the array of lederhosen.

The following day we took the train to the concentration camp known as Dachau.

Our guide was amazing, and gave us such a grounding in the history of those terrible years leading up to the war and of course during. We were with him for four and a half hours, together with a couple who were on their honeymoon. They were from Portugal, and both suffered from MS. They met during their treatment and decided to fall in love and marry. They told me all this as we sat in the torture room, where previously 50 men at a time were hung with their arms tied behind and suspended from a pole. The arms were wrenched out of their shoulders, as dogs bit their legs. I listened to the couple’s unusual love story. It was good to hear of love and courage in such a place.

We saw where people were shot randomly for looking different, standing out from the crowd, daring to be an individual. The statue outside the gas chamber depicts a man with his head up, kicking the ground, doing everything the Nazis would have hated. The individual had survived.

We saw the photos, the pictures of piled up bones, and the sculpture that was erected outside the administration building. It is controversial, some people like it, and others don’t. I did. It showed men throwing themselves on to the electric fence, defying the soldiers, and denying them the chance to kill them.

We left Munich and drove down to Austria to the pretty town of Zell am See where the World Championship of the Half Iron Man was to take place and James, John’s son, was taking part.

He and his girlfriend flew over from Hong Kong, his other son Matt and girlfriend came from Worthing and another couple with two small kids came from Antwerp. We were the official support team.

Austria was beautiful, first time for me, and it was just everything and more. I have never been a groupie before, so all this bike technology was quite amazing, and everyone was just so INTENSE. Anyway we hung about amidst the throngs of competitors and looked at the lake and took a day off and got the chairlift up to the top of the world and ooohed and aaaahed, then walked down to the next cable car stop and I just felt I WAS Maria!

The competition was on Sunday and James completed the course, (swimming 1.9 km, cycling 90.1 km and the run was 21.1 km) in four and half hours of baking sun. I was worn out watching it all, they were all so fit and lean and good.

I befriended a nice American family and sat on the pavement and played with three year old Jackson as the runners ran past. Also practised my granny skills with Laura’s little Ike and three year old Vivien.

It was quite an amazing day, so much lycra, expensive bikes, and I take off my hat to all that human endeavour.

On the last day we drove up to a wild life park, and relaxed amidst perfect green grass, neat and tidy chalets, soaring mountains, and were served fresh river trout by dirndl skirts and lederhosen.

I was amazed to see a massive bison, first time ever (I thought they just lived on the American prairies). There were a couple of brown bears, a lynx and a wolf. I looked at the heavily wooded forest behind the national park, and was quite glad of the fencing. I don’t think I would like to venture forth on a walk on these Alps.

John is off down south for a week to help with his daughter’s house, and polish James’s medal. I shall be alone, and already I have twitchy fingers. The sewing machine is beckoning. I can make all the mess I want!

So let it rain or snow or whatever, here’s to those with the stamina to dream and hope and achieve. Slainte!

Edinburgh is in Festival mood once again. It is like being in the Tower of Babel with the chattering of ‘tongues’ and people from all parts of the world squashed on pavements or queuing up to watch some snippet of fancy.

John and I were beguiled to go and watch a one woman show, starring Kate Cook in ‘The Invisible Woman’. We would never have known about her, as the guide book for the festival fringe is just about as fat as a Bible, with so many options, so when she presented her flyer to us as we drank white wine in the Grassmarket (in the sunshine), we decided to go along. For an hour we were transported into Resistance France, courtesy of this amazing woman who with her voice and mannerisms, morphed into ten characters. Such talent. The Royal Mile is fun, alive with talent and street theatre. It’s good to wander and just become part of it for a while.

It was even lovelier on Saturday as we joined the walking group and drove down to the Scottish Borders to begin our walk along the River Tweed. The walk took in Old Melrose where St Cuthbert was Prior, then followed the Tweed south, and crossed the river near Dryburgh and returned via Wallace’s Statue and Scott’s View.

We ambled along; our fellow walkers were nice, it was good to share the chatter, discuss herbal recipes and feel the lushness of August.

The Himalayan balsam and nettles were fighting for space in the thick grasses, the corn fields were ripe and pale lemon, and we marched upwards through the muddy paths to the a quaint statue of muses that invoked poetry by the border poet James Thomson,

and then the mighty red stone statue of William Wallace holding a sword the size of a telegraph pole. There was no resemblance to Mel Gibson at all.

John and I are charging about the countryside and the streets of Edinburgh looking for a new home. When you have the choice suddenly the choices are just too much. Do we want the beautiful green glens south of Oban, in a house nestled beneath a hill where the red deer walk on an evening, beside a rushing stream?

It has a sitting room with a floor properly sprung for dancing, large enough to take two sets of eightsome reels, but how often would we have the full complement in order to dance the night away? Would Don come from Vietnam to play on his violin, the same that used to accompany us on other dancing nights in Hanoi?

We have looked around the city, but prices are now extortionate. We have looked by the sea, and across the river in Fife. We did see a fabulous house at the weekend, sitting on the shore of the Forth, under the great engineering construction of the Forth Bridge. It had seals bobbing by the shore and a viewing deck just begging for a glass of wine and salt and vinegar crisps!

I suppose it’s one way to see a country, having a mission, and setting off not really knowing what we will encounter. It is always the question, how close is it to friends and family; is it too remote? Would the Ardnamurchan Peninsula be right for us at this stage in our lives? Head and Heart – it always gets back to choices. I suppose it has to be somewhere in between, but with hospitals and airports close by. In the meantime our garden is a riot of colour and I see the Bishop of Llandaff has come out in all its red glory at last.

Natasha and Leo are full of creativity at the moment. They have just completed the stop motion section of the music video for the pop group Leftfield, it is quite amazing, and I couldn’t believe how Natasha made all the puppets.

https://youtu.be/oJVyEELSlM8

They are now doing another animation for another group; it is less horrific I think! It features mermaids and seals, and is very pretty. Meanwhile Bonnie is with her childminder and has been gallivanting at the toddler gym, and judging from her appearance on Skype she is looking very happy with life all round.

I am having Gerry and Cathal round on Thursday and plan making a grouse recipe. A first for me, but should celebrate the season and all that, and justify the poor wee birdies dying for sport. The one I killed recently on the road damaged the cruise control camera on the car… the cost of fixing it is £400!!! We won’t bother, as we can cruise along quite nicely without it.

Just have to add a post script. With all this house viewing we have done recently, we were most amused with a certain agent showing us around a house in Oban. The rain was lashing horizontally and he peered out of the window of the elegant house overlooking the sands, and said ‘Who on earth would want to live here?’ He then went on to tell us about the builder who had built the development, a man called John Mac……; apparently ‘he was very unpopular in the village, a right bastard, God rest his soul, but he did a grand job here. The bastard, may he rest in peace.’ I did like him, (the agent that is), it might have been fun to get to know him socially!

Now off to see the sights, the city awaits with all its nonsense and music, and the sun is shining.

Next week we shall be in Austria, as John’s son is to be in the World Championships of Iron Man. I shall yodel at the side with a sausage and a beer. (Hope it won’t make him fall off his bike!)

I can’t believe that it has been two months already since we got back from India. I know this because today is the day I am supposed to taste the lemon pickle that I made and was supposed to store for two months before eating. I shall make a curry tonight especially to go with it. It brings back memories of Shiva and our Indian cooking lessons. I actually thought about him yesterday as a Great Spotted Woodpecker appeared in the garden and was pecking the fat. Up until now it has been tits and blackbirds that have been the main visitors, so the flash of red, black and white was exciting.

I am feeling poorly with a persistent cold that won’t go away. It comes as a sneeze, an itch in the ears, a tight chest, and feeling of aching and weariness. Oh, woe is me. It has been five years since my last one, and I’m frustrated that it won’t disappear with a pill. I need it to be GONE by Wednesday when we are off to sunny Spain to climb Moorish trails and don our hiking boots and drink wine and nibble tapas under a sombrero. I can’t wait, but must shake the tissues and inertia before that!

I did meet up with Sheila and Iniz yesterday in windy Edinburgh, and instead of seeing the sights we spent the day trying on clothes in John Lewis. I came away with one yellow T shirt and severe depression from the changing rooms. I shall maybe forego the Tapas in Spain.

Later, I idly flicked channels on the TV and came across Iain Banks’ interview with Kirsty Wark.

I was drawn in and just loved his dark humour, his wry take on the world and his cheeriness. At the point of the interview he had been given the news of his terminal cancer; in fact he died two months later, but listening to him, it was with a sense of joy at his life and his achievements and what he felt about life. I went to bed and glugged a mouthful of Benylyn and slept the sleep of the drugged. I am enthused. I must get back to that book that is sitting there, waiting to be written. It is at Chapter 10.

I met four wonderful women this last week. Bridget Biagi (who has just written an account of her life as an actress and mother and just a ‘liver of life’), and Alma Cullen, a writer of screenplays for Inspector Morse and many more TV dramas. It was lovely just listening to their memories of a time when they shared a car to go through to Glasgow for an episode or whatever. But now, they still retain that joie de vivre, and Bridget especially a childlike enthusiasm for the next adventure.

She turns eighty in November. My third new friend designs gardens and is involved in all sorts of other ventures. When we talked it was like a new world was opening up, where anything is possible. I met the fourth new friend at a random meeting at the bus stop. She had just bought a new sewing machine and immediately my beady eyes spied her purchase and then it was ‘chatter chatter’ all the way into town. She is Canadian and a quilter. We shall meet again!!!

I came home and again I had that feeling that I must get on. I must finish my silly books. The characters are all in my head, but need to get out. I saw an advert in the paper for a pavilion summerhouse (a glorified garden shed) in a soft turquoise shade.

It would be perfect. I could sit in there and write. I could sit in there and sew! John just growled and said it would be good for storing the bikes. Sometimes I long for a garden with a view to the sea where escallonia grows like red jewels, and each day the view changes with the mood of the sky and the clouds, but then I fancy trying on clothes in Marks and Spencer and it is just so easy to walk into town and see people and do whatever. Iain Banks maybe had it right as he lived in North Queensferry just across the bridge – so easy to get to the city if he wanted.

Here is the cow parsley growing like soft clouds by all the pathways. A harbinger of summer, of bumble bees and promises of all that summer brings. But it just feels like a false promise at the moment. I am still in my puffer jacket with scarf tied tight around my fragile neck.

I have also just ordered the House with the Green Shutters, written by George Douglas Brown at the turn of the century, about a small Scottish village with all the warts and cracks showing. No soft romanticism like Sunset Song and the idealist folk of Kinradddie. So once I have read it, I shall comment. I remember reading The Land of the Leal, by James Barke, set in Galloway in the Borders; that book was just so full of misery and hopelessness it affected me profoundly. It was my father’s favourite book and he read it regularly all the time he was a rubber planter in Malaya. Maybe he missed the freezing hail on a winter’s morning, when he went down to the byre to muck out the cows.

So, here’s to friends – old and new. They are warm, exciting, and inspiring. They bring out the best in us, and encourage us to do our best. And I shall! ….

Thank God for diaries. Days zoom past, things happen, trips are made and all events recede like snow off a dyke. Photos do conjure up the moment, but not like the words used to describe the feelings at the time. I listened to Samuel Pepys’s diary being read on Radio 4 and it was just so absorbing, full of his jealous rage directed towards the dancing teacher he had employed for his wife, then of course the poignant diary of Anne Frank. Mine is less dramatic. It sort of reads: Slept well, met Dilly for coffee, did some weeding, John and I watched Breaking Bad… soo cool. Not exactly world shattering, but, very good if you want to win a million dollar bet. On 28^th April we DID go to Haddington. No arguments, it is all recorded in blue biro. I have so many Five Year Diaries in my camphorwood chest, all recounting the years of my children growing up, wine being made from birch sap and primroses, school teaching, holidays and so on. And further back I have small Collins diaries for the years 1968-72. I spent a couple of nights with my old school friend Sheila recently,

and she had unearthed her diaries for us to peruse. Oh my! We laughed till the tears ran down our faces at the obsession we had with the Boys’ School at Morrison’s Academy.

In 1969 she wrote:

Gael’s heart goes boom bang a bang  for Doley. She met him after Youth Felly. Washed my hair.

Didn’t smile at church.

Gael is not going with Doley.

Got a new algebra jotter and ate Susan’s apple.

Phimmie and Rhona  got caught pinching cornflakes.

I wore new Pretty Polly tights (apricot) and strawberry meringue lipstick. Went to see Shalako with Brigitte Bardot at the flicks.

Listened to Je t’aime in the Games Room.

A Gideon was in church today and we are all now converted.

In the previous year, 1968, she recorded our trip to Dalwhinnie for half term: (We changed out of our Harris Tweed coats and kilts at Perth station into something extremely unsuitable for the February weather.)

Arrived with sling backs and snow was ankle deep. Went sledging at night. Went to a licensed bar and drank Babycham.

Went to a disco in Aviemore and saw a fight. Lots of blood. Went to bed at 4 am. Aunty Mary was frantic.

Slept till 2 p.m. Went to Granny’s and took out a cow’s eye with a rusty nail, dissected it and got the lens!

Went up upon the moors and it was gorgeous and we sunbathed. A Land Rover passed.

No train ticket, sat in first class. Two inspectors.  Hid in the bog.  Belted for it .in Perth.  Was scared.

The Bible Class Party Sheila, Margie and Gerry Gerry MacKay with Pete McNee Me with Campbell Holden Pup Balfour, Charlie Harley and Sheila Oh how wonderful to relive those days and hear our voices. Sheila had a selection of my letters that she had kept and I have a bag of classroom ‘notes’ from Lyn and Gerry that just take me back to the moment.  We sat up too late and I took a while to nod off as names of once white hot passions whirled around my head. I must make a bonfire… but not yet! In the meantime John and I have been out and about enjoying spring, April showers and eating the spoils of our foraging trips –  wild garlic pesto, nettle and garlic soup, and from Tesco’s, kale and avocado and kiwi to make delicious healthy shakes. It has been lovely rediscovering the city at this time of year. That’s trying to climb on to a branch in the Botanics…not as easy as you think!

I had a week down in Wales meeting up with Natasha, Leo and Bonnie.

It was all just perfect, and I became part of a normal week with them. I visited the playgroup (Bonnie loved the car), swimming lessons, and Natasha and I went on the train to  Barry Island and sat on the sand and then did a little light gambling in the amusement arcade. We both lost £3 each. Bonnie was quite intrigued with it all.   It was fun just watching her walk about, and I suddenly saw the world through her eyes. She fixes on the minutiae, the tiny insect, the snail, and everything is a miracle. We introduced her to a fish, and after looking at its eye and its teeth, and bending over to give it a very close look, she decided it was good enough to kiss. So she did! John has been running. He is determined to get fit after all his desk work in Doha, and has taken to run down the Water of Leith most mornings. He feels great and when his son Matthew came up last weekend they both entered the Park Run out at Cramond and took part in a five km run, along with 474 others. He was jubilant when he returned, and made a good time and is all set to go again this Saturday. The Lady of the House, needless to say will be at home in bed with her novel. We had a fabulous time with Matthew and his girlfriend Alex. Saw the sights and ended up watching Acoustic Dave in the Royal Tavern on the Royal Mile. A hen party was in full swing, and the ‘bride’ was a sweetheart from Liverpool. A fight broke out in front of us (between 2 men, not the hens), much to the amusement of our visitors, but Acoustic did some heavy peace-making outside, and soon the party resumed. The bride took such a shine to me and I ended up dancing till dawn and John with the bridesmaid. His son watched quite bemused! Later we made our way home, with three phones not charged and no taxis in sight. So we decided to go to Fingers Piano Bar, but the queue was miles long, and the heavens opened. Oh it was wet. Then suddenly there were rickshaws just waiting to be hired, so we sped home, with the poor lads pedalling their legs off, and us warm and cosy wrapped up in a blanket, watching the rain fall. Felt like that Mitford sister saying: ‘I  felt so sorry for the poor people that have to walk whilst I am so cosy in the car!!’ Anyway, a good night. My diary entry looks a bit wobbly. The writing looks spidery and I run on to the next line. Must mean something!

Whilst I was in Wales John made the most beautiful fairy house for Bonnie (when she visits). It truly is amazing. It will see her through till her teens as the roof is solid cement! I shall put a quilt on the ground for her to sit on while she plays.

Now off to book our tickets to see ‘Dolly West’s Kitchen’ at the studio at the Festival Theatre. My friend, Irene is starring in it, and I can’t wait to see the show. But first must hang out the towels… the sun is shining. Adieu!

It’s April, and the wild garlic is profuse along the Water of Leith, pungent and wonderful as we zoomed by on our first bike ride of the year. The going was tough on muscles that have only traversed the breaking waves on a beach in India, so the following day  we  lay like invalids, just giving thanks that it was cold and wet and we didn’t need to go anywhere in a hurry.

Oh how lovely to be back. The daffodils, primroses and winter aconites rise from soggy mulch and there is a sharp, fresh wind with a promise of summer.

We drove north and I felt sad passing Dalwhinnie, a little hamlet on the A9 that once housed Aunty Mary. For years it was a natural stopping point to visit and exchange news.

It seemed strange just passing by, so instead we stopped to record the still snowy peaks of Ben Alder and the lacy pattern of snows on the lower mountains. The sky was dark, but we headed west to Fort William and gobbled up some very good fish and chips.

We crossed over to the Ardnamurchan Peninsula by the Coran ferry

and the sun blazed and we crawled along as the beauty of the place just unravelled before us. Wild, almost empty, with deer standing outlined on hill tops and grazing in valleys, their colours camouflaged with last year’s bracken.

John was intent on getting inspiration for building Bonnie a fairy house, and he decided in the end it would be better if she just came and played amongst the mossy rocks, the lichen covered branches and the fifty shades of green that is most certainly the home of millions of fairies.  I think he was quite inspired though!

We decided to drive to the end of the road, to the light house on the most westerly point of the British mainland.

We found a field of lamas, then couldn’t get past as a giant highland cow crossed the road. We patiently tried to photograph them for posterity but it was obviously a ‘bad hair day’ as they all turned their heads and wouldn’t give us their best angle. Oh well.

The single track road was murder, and l o n g. Finally we arrived at the light house, and I remember my James MacTavish and Suzannah from The Highland Games had a thing about this place, so I said to John to stand still so I could snap him with the mighty structure. It was like one of these very bad cartoons, I was so busy trying to get the height and John into the picture I fell back and lost my balance. By this time he was bored and had walked away. I was fizzing. Imagine if I had fallen into the wild sea? I looked out on the islands of Rum, Muck, Eigg, Mull and Tiree. Too far for anyone to spot me, that’s for sure.

The stupid lighthouse is all automated and all you can hear is a humming sound of computers.

What is the point of that great fog horn, without some eagle eyed human to spot the emergency?

Where is Grace Darling when we need her?

I gave her a lot of thought on the way back. She was a lighthouse keeper’s daughter on one of the Farne Islands, on the Northumberland coast, and on ‘one dark and stormy night’ at the age of twenty two she espied from her bedroom window, the wreckage of the Forfarshire, a paddle steamer that had ran aground on the rocks of the coast. She and her dad could not take the official life boat out due to the rough seas, so they took a rowing boat and rowed for nearly a mile and managed to rescue five of the survivors.

It was heroic, and later she became feted by one and all. Even William Wordsworth wrote a poem about her, and Queen Victoria congratulated her. Sadly she died of TB at the age of twenty six.

‘Together they put forth, Father and Child!                

         Each grasps an oar, and struggling on they go–

         Rivals in effort; and, alike intent

         Here to elude and there surmount, they watch

         The billows lengthening, mutually crossed

         And shattered, and re-gathering their might;

         As if the tumult, by the Almighty’s will

         Were, in the conscious sea, roused and prolonged

         That woman’s fortitude–so tried, so proved–

         May brighten more and more!’

 We found ourselves in Salen for the night, and we drank wine and sat out in the conservatory and looked out on the loch, still and black as a mirror, and watched the grey lag geese waddle on the marshy fore shore.

I thought of the Chinese poet, Lily Yu, who wrote in AD870,

“Wild geese fly,

Fish swim through water

And carry their thoughts

Across the miles.”

I ate local prawns and we both slept like logs.

The morning was fresh and we shared our breakfast time with an elderly gentleman from Kent. He had the soft burr of a highland accent that he had not quite forgotten. His mother had come from Arisaig. He told us of his love for photography and for this area, and how he and his wife had once stayed at Glen Borrodale House in 1957, following the wedding of his brother in Glasgow. Imagine the horror of finding the newlyweds just honeymooning down the road, thinking they had escaped from everything and everyone!

He told us of his project to photograph a circle of oak trees in the Aryundel forest, in Strontian. He had taken a photo in August, when the colours were rich, the bracken golden and the leaves full. He wanted to take the same shot in spring and in winter, but sadly he had a stroke last year and couldn’t manage the walk. He had gone back this year but couldn’t find the spot.

John and I now had a mission. We drove off, stopping for a while in a nature hide and were so lucky to see two otters playing on the rocks, then diving and swimming just in front of us, and to our right seals lay supine with their large eyes and whiskery faces.

I read the poem by Sorley MacLean that had been etched in wood in Gaelic, and I thought of Shiva in Goa, and how he had learnt how to speak this language, and would not have needed the translation.

I love this poet, not that I can read and understand in the native words that he writes, but from the interpretation that our minister in Glenelg used to share with us. Mr Beaton was Skye born, and loved all poetry but when he spoke Sorley MacLean’s words in Gaelic and then translated, suddenly the smell of the bladder wrack and sea shore came to mind or the soft mosses and silvery forms of the birches were there, in front of my eyes. I love this one about

The Woods of Raasay

Floor of bracken and birch

In the high green room

The roof and the floor

Heavily coloured, serene:

Tiny cups of the primrose

Yellow petal on green

And the straight pillars of the room

The noble, restless pines.

So we walked the Fairy Walk, through trees and over the river and I think we found the gentleman’s circle of oak trees – who can tell? Now we should come back in August and compare the stark spring shapes of the tree form with the rich plumes of summer colour.

John found a bench with the mighty Ben Resipole in the back ground and I thought of the inscription I found on a bench in Adelaide in Australia.

‘Sit doon a while, and tak the weight aff yer feet.’

Quite so.

We walked on looking for the signs of pine marten and wild cat but they are canny creatures, and do not take their strolls where we are likely to come upon them.

It was enough. We had seen otters and seals and buzzards and enough lichen and mosses to last for a while. We came home and our garden is full of soft purples and nodding daffodils. I miss the wild and wet lands of the west, of opening curtains in the morning and looking out on to rippling water and dun coloured mountains. I miss the wild hyacinths growing in the boggy riversides, and the leaves of the yellow flag irises. I miss the smell of seaweed and cold wind. And yet – how lucky I am to live just a drive away.

Lily Yu said,

“Pine trees are content

To live their lives

On high mountain slopes”

The moral? I suppose it is to be happy wherever you are!